Jon in the News!

Weight Loss: Jon in the news!
Jon Gabriel as he featured on 3News

 

Join Jon Gabriel as he talks about:

• How he lost 102kg – and kept it off
• How he narrowly escaped the September 11 attacks
• The turning point that made him transform his life

OR

Read The Lecture Transcripts Here

Male Speaker: That geezer right over there is also that geezer, and also that geezer, and also that geezer. He lost 100 kilos in weight without dieting. Job Gabriel was 186 kilos when he came close to losing his life in the September 11th terror attacks in New York. The lucky escape inspired him to come up with a whole new approach to weight loss by golly, that doesn’t involve dieting and now he’s sharing it with the world in a new book. Feeling skeptical? Me too. Ellen Gore went to meet him and find out more.

Ellen: Jon, you used to wear pants like this.

Jon: I was 186 kilos and my waist 60 inches, which is I don’t know 160 centimeters or something like that, so this was the type of pants that I would wear, similar to the ones I have at home that I held on the cover of the book.

Ellen: What was life like at that weight?

Jon: It wasn’t easy. It was a struggle.

Ellen: This coat would have fit him back then.

Jon: There’s always a prejudice when you meet somebody and they think oh, you should just lose weight; you should just eat less. If I have one message to the world, it’s not willpower or discipline; it’s simply about learning how to work with your body.

Ellen: He says he tried everything to lose weight.

Jon: I worked face to face with the late Dr. Atkins for a month. In the end, he just yelled at me for being so fat. I was at the Pritikin Institute in Santa Monica, California, I had an acupuncturist put seeds in my ear. Did you know there’s a place right here that’s an acupressure point right? So he taped seeds to me ear. Every time you feel hungry you’re suppose to press it so you won’t be hungry. So I’d be walking around New York smelling pizza and sitting there going like this.

Ellen: He was 186 kilos until an incredible twist of fate. On September 11th, 2001, he could have been on flight 93 from New York to San Francisco. It crashed into a field in Pennsylvania killing everyone on board. But by chance, he wasn’t on that flight and it changed Jon’s life forever.

Jon: When I realized that my life was spared, I just sort of had this kind of feeling like – I mean here I was killing myself, but it seemed like the universe gave me a second chance.

Ellen: What would you have left behind if you died that day do you think?

Jon: Well I would have left behind 186 kilogram body and a life full of unfulfilled dreams I guess.

Ellen: So he took control and changed things.

Jon: I hated living in New York, I hated being in a city, I hated being in an office, and it just wasn’t where my heart was. I wanted to be – I fell in love with Western Australia at one point. It was my dream to live there, and I decided that I was going to start making my dreams come true now or never. I was going to start living the life of my dreams now. I booked two one way tickets to Perth for me and my wife and the rest is history.

Ellen: And there his approach to weight loss, The Gabriel Method, was born.

Jon: The reason why dieting doesn’t work, and I’ll just say it, is that it activates this famine response in our brain, which is a survival program that we inherited from our ancestors to protect us against famines. It’s like artificially creating a famine, and then it’s going to make your body say hold on, we need to have extra weight because there’s famines out there.

Ellen: He says stress can trigger the same reaction, and therefore make you put on weight.

Jon: So by learning how to deal with mental emotional stress, you can actually get your body to want to be thinner.

Ellen: So the difference with your method is using your mind, not just your body. It’s like basically understanding why you are the way you are and then –

Jon: Exactly – it’s getting your mind and body to work together.

Ellen: And as you can see, the results for Jon have been remarkable. Gabriel says, once you’ve addressed your emotional and mental problems, then you’re ready to look at what you eat and that doesn’t mean go on a diet. According to Jon, it’s about adding the right foods that your body needs and that make you less hungry.

Jon: And certain foods that have the nutrients your body is starving for. Don’t turn it into a diet, but add certain foods because as long as your body is starving on a nutritional level it’s going to stay hungry. So by learning how to add foods that has omega 3 fatty acids, protein, and also live foods – by adding those foods to your diet all the time, eventually that stress goes away, that famine response goes away and you just become less hungry.

Woman Speaker: I fully recommend it because you can see what’s happened to me.

Ellen: The Gabriel Method is proving popular in Australia and so is the man behind it.

Jon: And that weight flew off me. That last pound, there wasn’t that plateau. That last weight flew off. It’s not a lose 20 kilos in 20 days type of thing; it’s a solve the problem forevery type of thing.

Ellen: So if you want to shed a few kilos and do it Jon’s way, the idea is to nourish your mind by nourishing your body.